The premise is like dozens of others - woman loses her job and goes home to small town where she encounters an old flame. One difference is that she quit because her brand new dream job got turned into the same old grind she's been knocking herself out in for years. And her current boyfriend did it to her, not intentionally, but still. The situation with the old flame is pretty bitter until of course, well you know what happens through the rest of the movie. Throw in the charity drive she pulls out of nowhere, with no time to do it. We get the same theme that runs through almost all of the Hallmark regular Christmas movies, and many on other networks - big city crush bad, small town community good.
Vanessa Lengies is energetic as Sam once she stops acting like a victim. She eventually settles down in a likeable role once she has a mission. She and Corey Sevier develop some chemistry once Sevier's Noah stops pouting about the past. Not that Noah doesn't have reason to be upset, and he's pretty much a saint besides. Following them in the movie is nice, but it's not great.
There's another woman interested in Sam who keeps flirting with him, but that character is just filler. Most of the acting is decent, although Bill Lake as Bob goes a little overboard in his role as clueless.
The movie is textbook predictable. It even has some of the standard plot devices to throw a temporary monkey wrench into the inevitable.
I've said this about a lot of Christmas movies - there are no great highs or lows or surprises. Something does happen just before the climax that might have been a little surprise if it wasn't such a typical plot device. It was presented a little differently than the usual.
Observation: Writers often present a character whose personality never could have gotten that character to where the backstory places her (or him) at the beginning off the story. Sam is presented in the first few minutes as someone to count on to get things done in a prominent NYC agency. She is a bit of a people pleaser, but the first scenes establish her as eminently successful in a high stress, high performance, cutthroat environment. Then she gets home and she adopts a timid personality. She's afraid to see anyone and afraid to go anywhere. She absolutely avoids any confrontation. This woman wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes in the environment the movie started her in, which is too bad. She eventually regains her competence, but I'm talking about personality. Sam's personality wouldn't last in that cutthroat NYC world because she's too sensitive and has too much self doubt.
Plea to directors: please make text messages readable to everyone who watches.
